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Renewing participatory democracy Multiple Differential Uncertainty
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Week 28 
Fiddling the money Our obsession with the "official" interest rate is astonishing. How can anyone believe that a tiny change in the price of money will affect the real economy? Not even the new Bank of England Governor Mervyn King can possibly believe that. The belief is a contemporary superstition, on a par with consulting chicken entrails, for the ancient Romans. The truth is that market economies are becoming less and less governable, as wave after wave of private capital overwhelms the markets, looking for investment projects. This preoccupation with the "price of money" is a capitalist diversion, grossly exaggerating the economic importance of currency manipulation, and of the manipulators.The success of modern economies turns on one thing alone - our confidence to consume. Such confidence can be delivered only by Governments. "Self-confidence BBC reporter Nick Assinder poses this telling question, in reporting the Prime Minister's appearance before a Committee in the Commons last Tuesday. I am in no doubt about the answer. Tony Blair is a man of average intellect, with a huge capacity for self-motivation - and self-delusion. This is easily construed as self-confidence. I do not think he lied over Iraq, according to his own lights - but his 
exaggeration of the "threat" posed by
Saddam to the UK was fanciful and reckless, an embellishment of the evidence, pushing the
case to its very limits -and beyond. I understand that, without approving it.
Every person facing the pressures of high political office must have a
strategy for handling them - and that is Blair's way. He lives on a
high, pushes at the
limits of credibility, bets the extra round. He is Butch
Cassidy (or was it the Sundance Kid?) - if things go wrong, his strategy is to fight
his way out- and he's prepared to go down in a hail of
bullets.
The
Achilles
Heel  The American economy is weakening rapidly. Unemployment has reached the
highest level for nine years.
Wall Street, while showing signs of recovery, is historically
very weak
indeed.
The probability is that it will be weakened further by the unwise
tax-cutting measures of the Republicans, favouring the rich and relying on
trickle-down. Consumer
pessimism, aggravated by corporate scandal, is reinforced by Americans'
worries about the war-mongering of their own President - and they fear worse
to come.
Malicious Oppression...
Biz Ivol is a well-known campaigner, in support of the medical use of cannabis. A protracted prosecution of her case collapsed last week in an Orkney Court, after a disgraceful two-year delay. This is an awful story of the law's collective cruelty to Biz Ivol and thousands in her position. Tragically, this is the doing of us all.
Retired Scots High Court Judge Lord Prosser, who left the Bench last year, now openly backs drugs legalisation. You can back it too, by signing-in on-line at The Angel Declaration. Corporate Disarray 
The biggest "news story" of our age is too big for the Meeja to recognise, let alone address. Its ramifications are too awful to contemplate, yet the evidence of it surrounds us each day, before our very eyes. Yet all Governments avert their gaze, unwilling to encompass the challenges of real reform.
 I cannot even find suitable illustrations with
which to introduce this subject myself - yet
I claim to be one of the few people to
understand the gravity of the situation. That is because I combine a
lawyer's X-ray vision with a lifetime of big-company and Board Director management - I know where the fault-lines are,
where the bodies lie.
Many crooks, not just a few..  Niall Fitzgerald, Unilever Chief Executive, complains that a small number
of "corporate crooks" are destroying the good name and reputation of the
majority of top businessmen. The majority of decent Directors
"deserve" their astronomical
salaries,
he claims.
Fitzgerald is being naive, disingenuous. If this were true, Directors would not need to hide behind the corrosive, all-embracing shroud of corporate secrecy. They all have the opportunity, week-in week-out, to plunder their companies in secret, through the Board Room - and the majority do. Their "defence" (such as it is) is the dishonest smoke-screen of "market competitiveness". But that merely means that there is a sophisticated in-group conspiracy, to which all leading Directors are party. Who can ever say that a £1,000,000 annual salary is "deserved"?
Did you know that "The Monarchy" has its very own
promotional website? I wonder 
Reclaim by
I am deeply apprehensive about the current calls - from the Trade Unions, Tribune, and the Old Left - for the so-called "reclaim" of the Labour Party. The New Left Project (meeting last Saturday) places heavy reliance upon the resources and policy perceptions of the trade unions.
Try BBC News, the public service website for the best and quickest access to the news, as well as a huge political data resource, the BBC is unbeatable 
Localism Frustrated
The story of the Stillington Post Office Cooperative will stir the hearts of all good localists like me. The citizens of this popular Yorkshire village banded together to save their Post Office from closure, employing a manager and supplementing the labour force with a team of volunteers, to keep the PO open at all times.
The Fantastic
Special Footnote I love the online newspapers, which are my access to the world - share them with me - click through to their Homepages from here - Follow my August 2002 Russian Tour Diary, now unfolding in splendid technicolor - capacity problems have so far limited the scale of how much I can E-publish, but there is still plenty to read - St Petersburg Novgorod Moscow Tallinn (2) My diary Now up to date! I have re-structured my Diary to give you a day-to-day means of looking back, throughout the year
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What a great weekend! This Welsh beach, at Rhossili
at the tip of the Gower Peninsula, is just a few minutes from me, at home.
Will you keep the secret?
Diversifying the State
I believe that Ministers are showing a genuine interest in diversifying
and renewing
the State.
Darling U-turn 
I am delighted with the Government's U-turn on both roads and railways. But why, Alistair, did it take so long? The highway system is now clearly to be improved and expanded, while rail is to be limited to a skeletal main-line and commuting system, with passengers paying higher fares to reduce the tax subsidy. And there is at long last to be a serious examination of universal highway charging. Alistair Darling, as the latest in a long line of Labour Transport Ministers, has had to carry out the U-turn. But why did it take so long?
Finally, action  This man, UK Citizen
23-year-old
Feroz Abassi from Croydon is facing the death penalty in a US
military kangaroo court. And Backbench pressure has finally persuaded
the Prime Minister to act, at least to question the judgment of George Bush.This prosecution arises - not out of Iraq, but of Afghanistan - remember Afghanistan? UK subservience to the US has resulted in the abandonment of six UK citizens to illegal incarceration in Guantanamo Bay for the last eighteen months. Feroz Abassi is one of them.
I love
stamps, this time from Ireland
"Brownites!
Beware Our Police  Policemen
can be mischievous, self-seeking and unimaginative,
just like the rest of us.
I have always had grave misgivings about the character of the Metropolitan
Chief Commissioner Sir John Stevens, in spite of the excellent work he has
done in Northern Ireland.
And there are signs that the Force may be trying to discredit and undermine one of the Government's great recent initiatives - the introduction of Community Support Officers. The mainstream Police (with one of the strongest trade unions in the country) always opposed these CSOs - "cheap labour" was the predictable jibe. And now the carping, and the needling, and the fault-finding is starting.
Kiss and make up
This new BBC style started about two years ago (triggered, presumably, by Greg Dyke). I dislike it intensely. And the BBC does not even do it well. In this case, it generated the flimsy and ill-researched allegation about "sexing-up" intelligence reports.
Much Ado 
Our hope must be that the Government is very subtle - and that by lighting the touch-paper of age discrimination, they are laying the ground for radical pensions reform. The current debate is incredibly thin, insubstantial. But by openly debating the extension of working-life to 70, the Government could be laying the ground for a radical shift to a £140 per week pension-at-70. I hope they are.
I am sure you will want to keep in touch with what Steve Bell is drawing, in The Guardian 
I am definitely a socialist - but one saddled with a Presbyterian conscience. And this bottle of Corsodyl pricks my conscience. It is a mouthwash, and helps to combat the unpleasant experience of "bleeding gums" - not life-threatening, but an unpleasant phenomenon at any age.
BA Abuse of Power 
With the closedown of Concorde, we are facing a gross abuse of corporate power. Richard Branson wants to buy five Concordes, to fly the Atlantic under the Virgin label. He has offered £1m each, for five of the planes. Yet because they are "privately" owned by the British Airways "corporation", they will not be sold. These fantastic assets will simply be quietly destroyed, to remove the possibility of their being used successfully against BA.  This is a gross abuse of power.
Yet it is hardly perceived as such, in public political discourse. The
destruction of great assets like Concorde ought to be
considered a wrongful act, a breach of trust. Yet it is being conducted
before our very eyes, as an open act of commercialism vandalism. Richard
Branson is treated as a whinger, a bad loser. Indeed the
worst of corporate excesses, are all legal and above board - legal, but a
grave wrong against society.
Smoking v Freedom
Labour should resist the illiberalism of the Chief
Medical Officer Sir Liam Donaldson, and find new ways of reconciling the rights of smokers and
non-smokers. A complete ban on smoking in public places would be draconic,
and inappropriate. A left-winger by inclination, I sympathise with the "right-wing" lobby-group FOREST,
contending for "smokers' rights".
Straws in the Constitutional wind
Other recent topics
Multiple Differential Uncertainty Sunday |
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New
Claire Short uses her backbench freedom to
tell Blair that, with his credibility gone, he should resign before he is
pushed 
That
signifies, as night follows day, deeper economic recession - in a modern
consumer-led economy. Governments can no longer use war as an economic
stimulus. War creates too
many destructive anxieties in the minds of consumers. If Bush is to win the
November 2004
Elections, he must start talking peace very soon.
Consumers abhor war.
Connie who? Connie Fozzard
is the 70 year-old newly-elected Mayor of Truro, and a
retired surgeon who has taken up the case of drugs legalisation. Her
attack on drugs prohibition is being taken to the AGM of the British Medical
Association. She will propose simple legalisation,
as a Resolution for BMA debate. If
you agree with her, sign up now to the
Just consider the range of constitutional experiments that are in prospect -
"foundation" hospitals, community interest companies, local Police Boards,
local school "clustering", and plans to extend the remit of "micro-councils"
(parish, town and community councils). The success of all these
initiatives would shift power away from conventional 
True, there is
good reason to query Ministers' motives,
Family
Favourites is a gentle, populist TV programme, which I much enjoy,
thanks to the easy-going character of Les Dennis. And the
rules give a chance-to-win to the underdogs, if the leading-team should
falter before reaching the finishing post.
"Fotheringales!
Get ready to steal"
- exclaims Les Dennis with genuine enthusiasm and real energy - as the
leaders threaten to falter.
The
Commons Committee Report was, as predicted, inconclusive. But it does
confirm my impression that both parties have a legitimate cause for complaint. 
Genie
My nose tells me that the
Labour salariat is planning
"localisation" as a seductive theme for its third-term manifesto.
Nor do I quarrel with that, if it represents a genuine drive to devolve
power.
If other politicians share that sense, we can expect a battery of relevant
suggestions, from all quarters. This week, the LibDem peer Lord Carlile comes out in
favour of an